


What was there more to say

by Gallavantula



Category: Ghost - Mystery Skulls (Music Video)
Genre: F/M, Forgotten AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-13 03:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3365615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallavantula/pseuds/Gallavantula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the worst of things can be forgotten, and moving on is easier than originally thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What was there more to say

It’s like a sleep you have when you’re piss drunk. Really dark and heavy, and it’s a real struggle to wake up because their head is pounding and the sockets around the eyes feel like they’ve been traded with cotton balls. His throat feels like it’s been busy swallowing razors and his chest aches like someone slept on it. The whole night. He groans, softly, shifting around and something feels wrong. More than just a migraine flourishing around his skull and crawling down to his shoulders, but he cannot heads or tails distinguish why he feels that something is not sitting right. His gut roils and he groans again, shifting in the bed.

It feels hard, so flat and beaten up. He wonders if he slept on a futon instead. It’s when he breathes in through his nose that he gags, rolling onto his side and bracing himself with his right arm. The smell of cleaning supplies and that fake orange has his head spinning again and he wants to vomit. His mouth suddenly floods with saliva and he doesn’t want to be sick. He swallows and swallows, trying to keep it down but he thinks his panic is what makes it worse. Eventually he’s forced to lean some more, finding a railing and trying to grab onto it for support but it’s like his left arm isn’t responding so he missed and lands hard. 

He’s choking, coughing up bile and nothing else, his throat convulsing as his body recoils from the pain. Once his throat and stomach stop trying to turn inside out, he rolls back over, his lower body feeling numb and his hands following suit. His mouth tastes horrible, and the smell makes him feel ashamed. If he drank last night, shouldn’t he have puked liquids? His head is spinning horribly, and he waits, immobile for everything to calm down. However, before he’s fully settled again, the distinct sound of a shower curtain being moved assaults his ears and he grimaces, hissing at the sound.

“Oh dear, you were sick again, weren’t you? We’ll tidy that up.” A distinctly feminine voice, somewhat deep and older shocks his senses, and the first instinct is to panic. He doesn’t know this person. She sounds so much older, did he find his way in someone else's room? Was this their mom? Fuck. He tries to talk but his throat is so raw and it’s just sounds that escape him.

“Don’t worry dear, just rest yourself. I’ll increase your dosage and you’ll sleep just fine.” She says again, and panic does set in. The smell, this voice. Was he… in a hospital? That would explain the rail. He feels his chest tighten painfully and he gasps for air, his eyes starting to open through the crusting of sleep. His mouth is gaping, trying to formulate words but his mind feels like it’s going through a tunnel effect. His face flashes warmly and his right hand tries to find the rail again. Suddenly he notices that there’s a needle in his elbow and it hurts from him leaning on it earlier, but there’s something warm and more soothing blooming there. 

His blurry vision allows him to see briefly the curtain pulled around his bed, and the beeping of his heart rate reaches him for a few moments before it dims and fades down, disappearing. A elderly woman, maybe in her fifties with a curl of a bun over her nurses hat leans into his vision, using a towel to wash his face. She’s smiling but her eyes curl with sadness. Just what is going on? The warmth in his arm spreads to his fingers and he can move them in twitching motions, the rest spreading up his shoulder and his eyes feel heavy. He does not fight it, drifting again as the warmth soothes all the pains and soreness and aches that he’s feeling. 

“Sleep well, mr. Arthur…” The woman whispers softly, towelling his neck and chest briefly before taking her hand away and allowing him to drift peacefully into a drug induced sleep.  
__

The next time Arthur stirs, he feels less worn down and drunk. His head feels more clear, lest stuffy and the pain from earlier, the migraine, seems to have calmed as well. His mouth feels dry like the desert, and no amount of running his tongue against the roof of his mouth or the glands beneath his teeth seems to work. He allows himself to sit still, resting as his body seems to shift and twitch on it’s own. Once time passes enough and he feels more alert, he peers his eyes open to confirm what he was dreading. The curtain is still there, and the beeping of his heart rate jumping a little is also not so reassuring of his situation. 

What the hell was he doing in a hospital? He shifts a little, fixing a kink in his back when he notices that his left arm is still completely numb. Did he have an accident? Was it in a cast? No amount of moving his shoulder seemed to make any evidence clear. He tries to use his right arm to scratch at his back, when the moment he moves it he feels another hand on his. He leans his head over, slowly, trying not to overwhelm himself, when they settle on a familiar head of blue. Vivi. Vivi’s here. His chest seems to swell, warming up from the joy he felt. Vivi was here for him. 

Arthur’s movement stirred her a little, waking her up from the unrestful sleep she had been dwelling in. Vivi lifted her head, blinking and wiping at her lids with two fingers from underneath her glasses. She glances at Arthur, making him feel like she’d done this motion quite a few times, and then her eyes widen in surprise. 

“Arthur?” She murmurs softly, disbelief colouring her tone as her hand drops, to the handrail. He smiles, weakly, trying to work up a voice to talk to her, reassure her, ask her some questions but he’s shocked into silence, her eyes watering with giant wet tears. What? 

“Arthur!” She cries a little more loudly, a sob working it’s way out of her beautiful mouth, sitting up and knocking over her chair. “Oh, Arthur!” She cries, the fat tears trickling down her cheek in rivulets. Vivi gathers Arthur’s head in her arms, crushing him to her chest as she holds him tight. He can hear her sobs all the more strongly, his ear pushed in between her breasts and he can hear her breath, her every sob and whistle of air. She’s shaking, hard, and her mouth is planted to the crown of his head.

“I was so scared, I didn’t know if you’d wake up, ever again.” Vivi sobs more brokenly than ever, and it takes a lot for Arthur to move his arms up. He feels his right hand hold onto her side and he just hopes his dead weight of a left is doing similarly. He feels a dizzy distortion from moving his arms and there’s the fog of pain hanging over him but he doesn’t care. He’s going to hold onto the woman he loves. That he loves more than the moon and the stars. 

“Vivi…” He breaths, his voice almost completely eaten away. She sniffs heavy, inhaling sharply as her hands pet his hair. He can feel how oily it is, how it folds in fat clumps under her fingers and he worries about how long he’s been out for. 

“I have been visiting you every day, dreaming you died every night and I-I… I…” Vivi tries, her hiccups chopping her sentence carelessly until she collapses on him, just crying. He’s never heard her so vulnerable, so upset and distraught. His fearless friend, sounding so broken broke him too. He felt tears welling at the corner of his eyes, his chest wanting to collapse and disappear. What in the seven hells had he done to upset her this badly? What kind of fuck up got this bad to worry Vivi this much?

“I’m sorry…” Arthur managed to choke out, his cheeks getting more and more wet as she shook her head, rubbing her face in his hair and pouring her heart out. They stayed like that for a while, Arthur being forced to drop his arms when the pressure of pain became too much, but she pet his hair and rocked him, not seeming to care that the handrail was digging into her stomach. She apologized for breaking down, for not being strong when he needed her most but he managed, eventually, to assure her everything was going to be okay. 

Arthur had no concept of time, and the nurse’s entry seemed far too soon. His eye lids were heavy again and he felt exhausted, completely worn out from this tiny amount of activity. Vivi pulled away a little, her hands dropping to his neck and his shoulder, watching the nurse as she walked around the bed.

“I’m sorry my dear, but he needs his next dose, and I don’t think he’ll be able to stay awake long enough.” She said, soothingly, softly, as she placed a hand on Vivi’s shoulder. His vision began to blur as things went on, and Vivi’s response was garbled and distorted. Arthur felt like he was falling asleep, drifting off before he could ask what was going on, say good bye to Vivi. Her kiss presses to his forehead and it’s the last thing he feels before he drifts off to sleep.

This type of thing seems to be a reoccurring theme. Arthur wakes for a little while, puzzled by his numb limb and trying to move it, but his mind seems to look and go completely numb, and he’s lost time when he comes back. The more he struggles the more tired he gets, but eventually he realizes that his arm is bound to the bed, and he can’t turn his head enough to see it without it blacking him out and turning his head away completely, so he stops struggling. Stops trying. Vivi visits as often as she can. Some days she’s a brilliance, smiling and beautiful. Arthur cannot stop himself from thinking of her as angelic, her almond eyes bright and expressive. Some times she’s a crushed person, fallen and closed off. These visits have a lot of tears, a lot of consoling.

A week passes with barely a trace, and Arthur feels himself getting better. Getting stronger. He can sit up fine, moving around the bound limb to reach up to Vivi when she’s sitting. He can now eat on his own, having to teach himself to become right handed. He slips sometimes, not familiar with holding his fork or spoon in this hand, but he takes it as his time to do something while stranded in bed. Eventually though, curiosity overwhelmed his every thought. Usually Arthur would spend his day sleeping, resting and gaining energy for when Vivi visited, but not knowing what he was in for began to eat away at his mind. Did they bandage his arm while he was asleep? Clearly they did because he’d never watched them do it. 

The next time Vivi visits he waits until near the end to ask her. It’s smooth he thinks, careful. A gentle prod. She bursts into tears, touches his shoulder and apologizes, over and over before she can no longer speak, and she leaves. He watches her go, his mind spinning in confusion. Was it something she did? Was it why she felt guilty? There was no way. Arthur folded in on himself, frustrated that his favoured arm was bound and huffed. Eventually he dozed off, too tired to mull over it any longer.

The next morning, a different woman he had never met was there, sitting in Vivi’s chair and running her pen over a clip board. He leaned up, trying to see what she was writing when his left arm finally flinched, angrily feeding him a terrible pain. He winced, falling into bed as the woman noticed, lifting her head and fixing her blond hair from her face. 

“Good morning, Mr. Kingsmen.” She greater with a light voice, almost alto and Arthur felt like he was in trouble. Her way of peering over him was almost stern, and her suit screamed professionalism. He wished that he hadn’t stirred, hadn’t woken yet but here he was.

“Yes ma’am.” He replies with a worried stutter, and she actually smiled. 

“My name is Silvia Stound, I’m here to access your condition. Is that alright?” She soothes, lifting up her clip board for him to comfortably see. ‘Patient Wellness Assessment.’ Okay. He can do that.

“S-sure…” Arthur replies, nodding his head and settling himself in bed. She nods, smiling again and goes over her sheet with her eyes.

“How do you rate your pain levels? Please use one to ten, where one is none at all and ten is critical levels.” She starts carefully, looking up to him with wide, brown eyes. She was pretty…

“Uh, maybe 3. It’s just my numb arm, when I fight to move it.” He responds honestly, watching her nod and scratch it down. Then she looks up for a moment before reading the next question.

“Since your admission to our hospital, would you say your condition has improved? Please use one to ten, where one is not at all, and ten is perfectly healthy.” Her mouth seems to quirk a little, and Arthur smiles in response. Silvia must hate how robotic this must sound coming from her, and he can understand that. 

“I’d say a five? Though I’m not sure what I’m here for.” He starts, raising his hand to carefully rub at his chin. It’s then he realizes that his piss poor facial hair has grown out, and the black hairs have ruined his beautiful goatee. With a soundless grumble he runs his palm over his cheeks and feels the gross, sweaty strands scratch at his palm. His orange sideburns might bleed out onto his face, he should probably shave that. 

“You weren’t told?” Silvia says, her tone coloured with surprise. Arthur nods at her, still rather disgusted by his state of upkeep and not really paying attention to her worried and torn expression. “You have no idea.” She repeats, and then Arthur looks into her face and worries himself.

“Nope. None. Did I get hit by a car?” He asks with mild panic, already feeling his chest tighten and his forehead throb with pain. Shit. What happened to him??

“No… did your… Did your friend not explain to you?” Silvia tries again, putting her clip board down onto her lap and scooting the chair over and closer to the bed. Arthur is trying to read what is happening over her face but he feels his vision swim and it’s the same blackout feeling trying to surge over him again. He feels his heart monitor go wild by his bedside, and the world is just spinning so quickly that he wants to retch again but it will not come. 

“Mr. Kingsmen?? Arthur!” A voice cries but he can’t remember if it was hers or not. He can’t resurface beyond the surging rise, and his senses go dull. A scratching of metal is heard and a loud voice booms but he’s sinking, falling… Something grabs him near his head and shakes but by then his eyes cannot open and the seeping darkness has him again. This time though, he dreams. 

Amazingly it’s all in colour, which has never happened to him before. Just swirling wafts of colour but Arthur knows to be afraid. It’s solid, reassuring blue but it’s too far for him to reach, though he cannot see his own body. There’s sharp, menacing red that circles him like it’s waiting for him to attack. It’s passionate, encompassing purple but the purple keeps dropping from his vision. He feels like it should mean something, be important somehow but just like that, as he moves to approach it it drops through the ground, or what his mind thought was solid floor and did not bounce back.

His eyes feel like there a pressure on them, and eventually he comes to with a dry throat that has him coughing to awareness. What happened…? Arthur muses, trying to lift his hands to rub at his face but this time he flinches and there’s a searing pain in his shoulder. He’s hissing, working to open his eyes but a weight pushes up into his body and Arthur struggles not to panic. It takes some time, longer than he’d ever like, but eventually he is inside himself again, full and aware. The sweater in his face is soft but it smells, like the smell of someone wearing the same lazy pants for four days and sleeping.

His right hand obeys, and Arthur remembers that it was responding before too, and he holds onto the person hugging him, and the sob that meets his ears is very much Vivi’s. Why was she crying? His mind tacked on the invisible again and Arthur is struggling, hard pressed to figure it out. Her hand is carding through his hair again, rubbing at his temples and the crown of his head, and it feels like the blooming headache has begun to recede. 

“Oh Arthur… Arthur…” She bemoans softly, half hysterical and Arthur struggles to keep petting her back. 

“I….’m here…” He manages with a tongue made of sandpaper, his gums feeling endlessly dry. He wonders in the back of his head if he was dying, and that was why he was so everywhere about this. 

“I’m so glad you’re awake.” She whispers, kissing the top of his head and again that deja vu blindsides him. 

“How long…?” He asks with a little more strength, his hand shaking and her hand drops against his face, and he feels the bristles against his cheek and Arthur cannot stop the grimace. 

“Two days this time…” Vivi assures him, looking into his eyes with her own, and Arthur’s jaw goes slack from shock. Her beautiful almond eyes look puffy and baggy, rimmed with red but darker, like she’s lost more than just a few night’s sleep. Her cheeks are splotchy and there’s a discolouration around her mouth that makes him ill to see. What has he done to this lovely woman?

“Vivi, I…” Arthur mewls, moisture jumping into his own eyes but it’s not much. He feels so dehydrated and ill that his whole body shivers like it was cold. “What’s wrong with me..” He gasps, softly, and her eyes are shimmering with tears. She leans away, taking a hand to remove her glasses and Arthur’s panic is increased tenfold. He knows that habit. He’s seen it when they’ve failed a mission. He’s seen her pocket her glasses when she goes home to see her parents. He’s seen her drop away her glasses to mourn the dead. His jaw is quivering, hanging slack and the terror in his legs has them shaking underneath the sheet. 

“Arthur, you need to trust me, okay?” She starts, her teeth overly white and jarring. She’s trying to smile, her eyes dull and full of despair that even faking cannot hide, and she dropping her hands down along his neck to his left shoulder and from there he feels a dull throbbing, getting stronger with every inch she covers. 

“…’Kay…” Arthur murmurs, barely managing to get them past his throat but she nods that she’s heard him and continues to lower her hand until the pain becomes unbearable and he’s flinching away from her. She allows him to move, to distance himself from her but Vivi will not leave him for long. 

“There is no easy way to explain this to you, okay? You need to understand this first and for most.” Is how Vivi chooses to begin, closing her eyes and shuddering in a deep breath to concentrate. He nods his head, allowing her that moment of respite, that chance to gather her thoughts and the way her eyebrows relax along her brow are a sign of that release of stress, even for just a few short moments. 

 “I promise.” Arthur starts, running his tongue along his gums and his teeth with false attentiveness. He’s trying to hide his nervousness and the way he wants to run. The way he wants to flee this whole hospital, run as far as his legs could take him. Run all the way to Lance’s or to home, he didn’t quite care at the time for such a destination. Sadly, he was planted and tied to his hospital bed whether he liked it or not, and dealing with whatever it was that Vivi had to tell him. Her hand squeezes on his shoulder, trying to be assuring and rubbing her thumb along the bridge of his collar bone but he only felt more jumpy, more alert and more uncomfortable about what was out of his control.

“Arthur, I am sorry to be the one who must tell you this, but as your Best friend I feel like it’s what I should be doing for you.” Vivi avoids, swallowing hard and shaking her head. He watches with trepidation how her bangs move and stroke her cheeks, and even he can tell how unclean it’s been. He wonders again, like his brain could manage to even focus on one thought for long. Has she slept here, in the hospital, by herself to guard him? Be by his side like this, until he was conscious again? He couldn’t believe…

“Vivi, you’re horrifying me…” Arthur answers, managing to speak cleanly and clipped, trying to avoid the overwhelming surge of hysteria that wants to choke him. Her eyes focus and she leans in close, hugging his face and he tilts it to avoid pillowing into her chest. Not the time for those kinds of thoughts, you disgusting perv-

“Arthur… There’s no way to make this gentle. I am infinitely sorry.” There Vivi is firm, stoic and cold, and his hand spasms as his chest constricts in pain. He can’t breathe, can’t move and he feels so paralyzed in the rise of a panic attack. What was she going to say? Arthur was going to lose his mind! 

“You’ve lost your left arm.” 

I’ve…  
lost what?

 

 “What…?” He whispers, eyes widening when it finally does clock into place for him. The soreness, the phantom feelings in his arm… He feels the black tide trying to claim him but his shock and terror are enough to corral it back into a corner and Vivi moves back, arms resting around his shoulders but he’s not focused on her any longer. From here, he rotates his head, feeling the flexing of his muscles in his neck and shoulder, the soft burn the more he strains his left side and… Arthur scans his eyes over the bandage there, the clinical white and it’s contrast to his rather light skin. He follows each layer, each wrap down the start of his bicep and… then nothing but a surgical knot tied down with an elastic.

His breathing catches completely and he folds, dropping his head but Vivi is there to catch him. Vivi cradles him close and sobs at his response, already petting his hair and nuzzling her face into his scalp. Arthur can barely feel the fat tears now crawling slowly down his face. It takes a few moments for it all to click in place, to slowly trickle down into his reality that he was indeed missing an arm just at the top of his bicep, the half down to his elbow, to his wrist and his hand, gone. He sobs, more of a rattle of air in an abandoned home, and Vivi is open mouthed, sobbing too. 

They hold onto each other as the world Arthur had envisioned shatters, wholly. His schooling in engineering was going into the dump. He had no arm in which to obtain his degree. He had lost his dominant hand, and with it a majority of his skills, his mannerisms and his independence. Arthur had lost so much of a future in the instant Vivi uttered those words. It was terrorizing. Vivi being there to cry for him, he wondered if she pitied the poor bloke. No future, no ambition, only cowardice. Only shame. 

“Vi-vvv…” Arthur manages, half hiccuping for air and half whining. Her response is another exhale of tears and pain into his hair. His right hand… His only hand rises up to clench around her waist. He nuzzles into her, his face already drying from the lack of tears and her reassurance into his motion soothes him a little more.

“H-How..?” he breaths with barely any voice. 

“I… We… don’t know.” Vivi admits again, scooting herself over the bar and sitting into Arthur’s side, pinching his thigh in which he gratefully moved so she could sit at his side. His glance to her face revealed her grief and suffering for just a moment as she curled around him again, back turned towards his injury. 

“Don’t…” He parrots humbly, head hung forward as the same fears and words circle his mind. No future. Dropping out of school… No job. No independence. A cripple. A truer burden than ever before. Why…

“They found us on the road… The paramedics think a bear managed to sneak up on us while we took a break. It made off with your arm… into a cavern. They’ve sealed it inside in hopes of trapping it and moving it to a new reserve…” Vivi supplies, her streams of moisture seeping into his bandage but Arthur barely managed to care. A bear? A bear took his arm. His facial muscles twitch with a recognition to smile but he has no strength to do it. He would be the idiot trying to fend off a bear to protect Vivi. 

“I can’t… believe it…” He says in monotone, turning his head to lean against hers and Vivi shifts to make the new pressure comfortable.

“They wanted to save your arm but the tearing was so bad they had to remove a lot more than they had wanted… I’m sorry…” She utters next, trailing a hand around the side of his face and he feels like she’s being so close and intimate with him that his mind was getting the worst kinds of ideas.

“S’not your fault…” Arthur chirps, nuzzling into her again to be assuring. Bubbles of small, hysterical laughter seep out between her lips and she retreats her hand to try and stop them, but she forgets herself quickly and quiets. 

“I feel so guilty for how you ended up here…” She urges, leaning down to hide her eyes into his gown and it’s all he can do to curl his arm around her. “If I hadn’t forced you to come research with me this would… this woul-d…” Vivi sobs desperately, her sorrow rising full force to buff et over her as she restarts her cry fest. Arthur feels like he’s drowning again, suffocating in the feeling of his own guilt, his own self blame and the way things have happened. First Vivi would have never known this could happen, and he wanted to be there to protect her anyway. 

“Shhh….” He assures instead, hiccuping from his own rise of tears and despair. His life, as a young man, was over. They held tightly to one another for what felt like hours, trading regrets that did not matter at this time and what ifs that meant nothing now. Vivi eventually reached for some tissues and shared the spoils, whipping her face and sometimes Arthur’s for the lack of coordination from his own hand. 

“I’ll be there for you…” Vivi promises, grimacing with her mouth and crinkling her eyes closed. Her lashes are still moist and they glisten and stick together. Arthur wishes he did not see the beauty in it. 

“I’m a cripple.” Arthur almost spits, remembering himself enough not to insult or throw barbs at Vivi. It was hard grappling with despair. 

“You’re still useful and capable to me.” Vivi spits back, curling tightly around Arthur in a near sign of aggression, but he knew it was possessive. She wouldn’t let him rot away alone. He hated how she’d waste away for him. 

“For how long…? For how long can you endure my failure…?” He breaks at last, curling himself away like another moment near her would burn him. Vivi was stubborn and held fast, keeping him close. 

“You’ve never failed me Arthur, not once. I’m probably alive right now because of your bravery.” Vivi brokenly replies, tears thick in her throat and Arthur flinches, hating himself all the more. 

“I’ve fucked up my life!” Arthur barks, the loudest he’s been in almost two weeks and Vivi is finally silent, crying and shaking against his chest before he regrets every breath that took and holds her close, tightly to his front. “I cannot fuck yours…”

“I want you in it…” She murmurs at last, leaning up to place a soft, two second kiss to his cheek. His face colours and his body rushes with cold sweats and he feels so confused. 

“Please…” Vivi begs softly, nuzzling her forehead into the spot behind his ear and he cannot combat her any longer. He tightens his hold to squeeze her close and leans his head into hers. Arthur is unable to fight his love for her to do what is right. He cannot fight his will to be with her and protect her from everything. Worst of all, he cannot fight his greed to protect her from himself…  

 “I’m… here…” He manages at last, feeling her sigh and settle against his side like this. They holding onto each other for support and again, his missing arm is enough of a slap to the face that he nods his head down to hang. Her fingers trail his throat, his hair line, his scalp, and another kiss presses into the side of his face.  

 “We’ll make it through.” Vivi whispers faintly, nodding her head like it was a promise, and he could only clench his hand around her shoulder in response. There… was nothing further for him to say. 

  -- 

  The first day home, to their shared apartment is a strange one. Arthur’s brought in with the support of his Uncle and Vivi’s brother, both tall men strong holding him up the stairs without his feet touching the ground once; and though he hates how frail he is, how long it takes for him to settle his centre of gravity once they lay him down, he’s thankful for their help. Vitama(?) pets his shoulder with a shy, quiet assurance and Lance ruffles his disgusting mane before making their goodbyes and promises to return soon, leaving as they came.  

 Vivi seems to have kept herself busy cleaning, tidying up the mess in the kitchen, washing all the dishes (twice, it seems, as he notices the cupboards have no traces of settled dust anymore) and had gone around organizing the closets and dvds. Everything was in alphabetical order in the shelves, even the five rose wood bookshelves in the back space of their shared living room had every single book stored in order of title. As Arthur spent most of his time on the couch, watching tv and resting, he was all too aware of how Vivi kept running around with mops and dusting wands, catching every trace of age before it could even settle.  

 Eventually, there’s something he notices, among the frenzy of Vivi’s strange affliction. The third door… just before the bathroom and right after Vivi’s door… it’s something he doesn’t remember. At first, he assume’s it’s the closet to store towels, just so thrown off by how weak he feels and how much sleep he takes that Arthur has simply misplaced the little detail, nothing about it. The next day, Vivi urges Arthur to shower or bathe, wash himself clean and feel refreshed, and the ordeal is phenomenal. He’s thrown off of everything, trying his best to lower himself into the tub without slipping or knocking his feet over, and before long he simply kneels above the porcelain lip and presses down onto his chest, bringing his legs over to settle in the bottom and vault himself over, to lean into the water. 

Arthur cradles onto himself, barely able to look over his stump before he’s forced to gleam it over, free of it’s bandages for once. He’s disgusted. It’s still an ugly, swollen red and he can see the tears healing into scars, and the dimples from missing chunks of muscle that had been cut or sewn over to make as flat of a stump as possible. Arthur’s eyes rove over the clear, distinct shape of his new limit, and the fact that it was ripped by a bear was completely believable. This… was how his body looked, now. This was his reality. Slumping over, grief and helplessness closed in over his head like a maw of despair, and he allowed himself to cry.  

 There was nothing for it, he mused quietly. He was going to have to start from the bottom, all over again. His life… would be over if he didn’t push himself. For Vivi. 

  Eventually, she came to knock on the door, asking him if he needed any help, and Arthur eventually resigned to it. He’d forgotten a towel, and he feared getting back up on his own. She opened the door, making sure he was okay before leaning to the side and opening a door, bringing in a towel. His mind blinked like it was confused, and he realized that in fact, that door was not the third entrance he had originally believed to be the closet. What was… behind that wooden door? 

  Vivi came in, averting her eyes as she hands him the towel, and he curls it around himself to obscure his nudity before Vivi turned and grabbed onto his hand and side, giving him grounded weight to pull himself up. One at a time she helped Arthur lift his leg over the edge of the tub, offering assurances and asking questions about pressure and weight, but he was fine. Once standing, Vivi turned again to grab another smaller towel for the man’s hair as he dipped down to grab his sleeping pants and slip it on, one clumsy hand tug at a time. Eventually, he called out a soft ‘clear’ and she returned to help dry his head. Arthur would regularly complain and assure her he could take care of it, but with his shoulder as it was, he could barely lift his arm over his head.  

 So together they helped finish his routine, dry his hair and put some sit in conditioner for him to clear out tomorrow, and Vivi got a shirt over his stump with far less pain than Arthur could have managed alone. This alone took so much energy out of him and things are spinning a little in the back of his head. He feels sweaty again and he just wants to lay down. 

  “V-Vivi, can you…?” Arthur swallows, interrupting his request but the shorter woman seems to just understand and comes back beside him, curling into his side and beneath his arm and supporting him around his thin waist. He realizes how much weight he must have lost from his shock in the hospital, and having Vivi’s plump arm against him like this only makes him all the more aware of how much thinner he actually is.  

 “I’ve gotcha, love.” Vivi chitters gently, giving him a smile before nearly raising him up with her strength and helping him walk out. It’s just a few steps, head down to time things before he notices the door and squeezes her shoulder.  

 “What’s in there?” He asks too quickly, throwing a shaky point with his hand over her shoulder, and her gaze takes a few seconds to really figure out what he was indicating to.  

 “Oh…” Her soft voice drops, and Arthur tries to read her face but it’s hidden by the angle of her bangs. He… can already see the faintest traces of her black hair growing out, just from being so used to seeing her that it’s something that sticks out. “Well, I think it’s a guest room but… it’s weirdly personal.”  

 “Personal?” He murmurs in return, and she shakes her head, the curls of her bangs bouncing before she reaches for the knob, and holds it for a moment. 

  “When I cam home, there were… photos of people I didn’t know in a few places, and they made my headache awful, so I… hid them in here. But the room… I don’t know, it has things but I can’t look at them.” Vivi is cold, clipping these things out but he can see from the curve of her thick lips and the crinkle of her nose that… she’s probably feeling that head pain right now. So he wants to say let it go, that he’ll take a look later and that they should talk about her new headache problem he’s never heard of before, but she yanks the door open and Arthur is startled by what he sees. The walls are a deep fuchsia, litered with posters from so many things that a theme is hard to notice until Arthur really focuses on it. Magical girls, spooky themes and ghosts and skeleton people. 

  Arthur wants to think, process it but he can’t, going over the elegant duvet with a hand stitched square lined blanket folded over the end with care, covering a wooden box that held many movies that fit the same themes. Corny, super heroes and scary movies and cute, magical girl poses and colours. It felt, so odd, seeing a desk in the corner neatly cleaned off with a Sailor moon character posed on it, and skeletal decals on the wooden shelves and over the light of the lamp. He’s… never seen these things before, not the stain glass solar system on the window or the frilly looking bows on the knobs of the closet. And Vivi was right, clutching to her head and turning away from the doorway. This was too personal to be a guest room.  

No one else lived here, though. 

  “S-Sorry, Arthur, I need to…” She removes herself from around Arthur, making sure he could lean agains the wall before she picks up and dashes away to… something. He’s too lost to really consider her behaviour, other than the box two feet from where he was standing. So Arthur kneels, placing his knees on the ground before slowly shuffling his way closer. He can see maybe eight, ten photo frames over books and little bobbles he cannot recall ever seeing before. Not the pepper shaped salt shaker, not the cyan spoon with a dinosaur shaped handle, and certainly not the man in the top photo. 

  His hand shakes, his stomach dropping into his gut and all Arthur can feel is the need to retch, but he doesn’t. He reaches forward, tilting the frame back… and he doesn’t understand what he is seeing. There’s beautiful, thick beauty Vivi kneeling beside a fountain, her tights ripped and full of holes and covered in dirt and there’s water stained on her skirt and her grey hoodie, holding up a bag with a fish in it. Arthur’s on the left, waving a hand to the camera and holding a pong paddle with shyness and a grin that he knows means he was feeling nervous. His right arm is over the shoulder of a very tall looking man, though he was sitting he still dwarfed them both, and the man was smiling brightly as he held up a sceptre of some kind.  

 His heart felt heavy and nausea rose into his esophagus but he couldn’t stop staring at the photograph. The man’s skin was dark and rich, contrasted to the mulberry purple hair that sagged with wetness over his face and dripping shamelessly onto the expensive looking vest and tie combination. This person… was clearly important, being centre stage like this in a photo, but his mind seems to ache with a numb feeling. 

  Who… was this person? There was no dawning realization, no idea or inkling forthcoming to make the ‘aha!’ moment happen. Instead he feels cold sweats and anxiety skyrocket and he’s so sick. He… needs to go sleep some more. Yes. Arthur puts the frame down, pushing the box further inside this strange, alien room and backs out, tucking himself into the hall and closing the door behind him. His breathing is laboured and struggles, but he counts up to four, holds it for eight and breathes out for seven, forcing that calming response.  

 Vivi returns, looking just as tired as he felt and smiled at him. Together, they helped Arthur stand up, and hobble into his room. She helps lay him down onto his sheets, tuck in his trembling legs and Vivi even pushes his hair back with a hand to kiss his forehead. He… can barely believe the gesture is real as Vivi gathers his head phones and ipod for him, talking about a nap and waking him with dinner in four hours and he nods his head.They share a few more words, Vivi going to handle food as Arthur tucks himself into his bed, ignoring the stump of his arm to just lay the phones down beside his head, and press play. 

  He feels like… something important has been ripped out from his chest, and the patchwork is nearly as painful as his healing arm. What… did that room have to do with anything? Why did it exist? Were… Vivi and Arthur experiencing a haunting, maybe? Some ghost trying to ask for help with symbols and apparitions? He doubts the room will be there tomorrow, and the thought is only a little reassuring. His mind spun uncomfortably as it circled slowly into distorted, exhausted sleep. All he can register to feel in the back of his mind, is something hovering there, waiting, eyes narrowed and focused to pounce.  

 Just… who was the purple man in the photos?


End file.
